


Fractured Diving Bell

by NeverwinterThistle



Category: Kraken - China Mieville
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-13 21:40:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16900311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverwinterThistle/pseuds/NeverwinterThistle
Summary: Beyond the curtained window, the sun sat low on factory roofing. The flat they hid in was dusty, unfurnished, shadows in the corners that might have been web and might have been mould and didn’t bother Billy in the slightest. He and Dane would be gone before dawn.





	Fractured Diving Bell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pollitt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pollitt/gifts).



Beyond the curtained window, the sun sat low on factory roofing. The flat they hid in was dusty, unfurnished, shadows in the corners that might have been web and might have been mould and didn’t bother Billy in the slightest. He and Dane would be gone before dawn.

They sat near the window. Wary, peering past the curtain into the street below, no longer comfortable with separating even for sleep. Or rather, Billy wasn’t comfortable. He carried with him the ghost of terror-adrenaline that had driven him all over London’s secretive places, not underground so much as sideground, neighbours to the normal. The strangers he had met and bargained with, the treaties he did not understand but had exploited anyway. All driven by the one fear: that he would be too late. Dane’s absence had felt more permanent by the minute. That fear had left an afterimage on the inside of Billy's skin, and he felt it even now.

He wanted to ask if Dane felt it too, or something alike. He knew that they should probably talk. But all his attempts came out wrong, and turned into different conversations, or were ignored. Dane, it seemed, was happy to keep his confessions between himself and his god’s salt-and-Formalin forgiveness. Dane could pray to the deep sea currents, and the tendrils of his words would expand out to twine around the tentacles of saints. Dane didn’t want to talk about it.

And still Billy tried.

“So, so, are we done with the Chaos Nazis then?” he asked, and saw the tightening of Dane’s mouth. Ignored it. “Think we beat them all? Bastards. Think they’re gone for good? After…”

Dane shifted against the wall. Tilted his head to peer around the edge of the curtain, reassuring himself that the sunset streets played host only to fallen leaves and drifting plastic bags, and that their little safehouse was still safe. He didn’t says anything. Billy pressed.

“I had some questions about them, is all. I was just wondering-”

“My grandad taught me this game,” Dane said. It was abrupt, but not impatient; he did not snap, so much as redirect. He was patient with Billy’s clumsiness. “When I was a kid, mind you, so it’s a bit childish. Want to see?”

“Dane, I- yeah. Yeah, alright.”

“Make this shape with your hands.” Dane held one out, fingers crooked like claws, but softer, less tense. Billy recognised the imagery; tentacle-ligament, a saint’s shape in bent knuckle and the narrowing of the wrist. He mimicked. Tried to copy the wriggle of Dane’s fingers.

“Passable,” Dane told him. “Though yours looks a bit…”

“Specimen-y?” Billy suggested. They both laughed; it was awkward, but not artificial. And Billy rather thought he had a point. Dane’s ‘saint’ had the elegant, predatory grace of the hunting ground, the deep waters. Billy’s lacked life. His saint moved through ethanol, formalin-fixed tendrils drifting.

“Are we going to make them fight?” he asked dryly.

“Well, yeah,” Dane said. He looked a little embarrassed about it. “Told you it was childish. Look, you don’t have to-”

“I will destroy you,” Billy said, making snapping motions at Dane’s hand. “Surrender, and I may show you mercy.” His reward was the spark of light in Dane’s eyes, on his face, the inky shadows briefly parting for a flicker of phosphorescence. Life at the base of a deep sea trench. He treasured it.

He’d have let Dane win, too, if it had been necessary. It wasn’t. As their ‘saints’ darted and snapped at each other, and Dane toyed with Billy’s slower reaction speed, he talked. A meandering monologue, no clear destination, but it seemed to help him. He told a few stories about his grandfather (terrain wars with vastly inferior octopus priests, a drawn out conflict with the cachalot clan whose whale-worshippers invoked their nature-given right to prey on Church of Kraken); alluded, though briefly and with some shame, to his crisis of faith and his time in the army, and it was clear that a small part of him missed it.

He talked about Billy as well. About their shared time at the Darwin Centre, time which they now knew they had wasted in silence and strangerhood. _Knew you was important, knew you’d touched god, but I still thought you were a bit of a prick to be honest with you_. _Why’d you keep doing that shit with your glasses?_

“You leave my glasses alone,” Billy said, narrowly avoiding death by phalange-tentacle. “How come you never said a word to me? I was always trying to strike something up.”

“Part of the job. Sorry you lost sleep over it.”

“Piss off,” Billy said amiably. “I might have taken it a bit personally, is all. You were sort of my type.” This time, he was the one on the attack, snapping at Dane’s hand as he faltered and saved himself at the last possible second.

“Right,” Dane said. “Really? Shit, I should have spotted that.”

“Look, it doesn’t-”

“So how come it’s past tense? _Were_ , not _are_?” He was smiling, and it wasn’t forced at all. Just pleased, just a little bit smug, masculine arrogance. Billy didn’t hold it against him.

“Well,” he said, “I mean, there’s the apocalypse thing, and the whole _squid worshipper_ aspect-”

“Could be worse. Could be ferrets.”

“And that’s not even starting on personality.”

“Nothing wrong with my personality,” Dane said, grinning openly now. He was missing a back molar; that was new. “Ain’t you the bloke who knows everything about _Star Trek_? You’re lucky I didn’t walk out on you after the whatsit, the trubble thing.”

“Tribble, you savage.”

“Never met anyone else who could kill a mood that fast. ‘Tribble’. _Mate._ ”

“For fuck’s sake,” Billy said, and thought, _you’re very good at this, aren’t you? Keeping my mind off it all. Calming me down, when it should be the other way around._

It was needlessly, unbearably kind. Billy loved him for it, a little.

“Snap,” Dane said, his hand closing over Billy’s own; simulated predation, and for a second Billy imagined that his skin was colder, rubbery, that a beak bit down through the ligaments and frail bones, that his false saint was snapped in two and cast out into the bleary black abyss. No glass to encase this carcase. He let his hand fall limp in Dane’s. They both looked at it, and Billy abruptly decided that it was too real, too soon in the wake of saving Dane. He pulled his hand free. Dane let him.

“Lucky win,” Billy said. “Bet I beat you next time.”

“Sure you will,” Dane said, but he refused Billy’s challenge, _best of three, I’m just warming up_. The game was done and he had lost interest; he shifted restless on the floor, and now the weight of exhaustion seemed to catch him up, settling over him like a mantle. Now he looked less sure. The day’s fervour fading into evening reminiscence, late night confession. Now, he was solemn when he talked. He folded his legs underneath him, leaned forward and demanded Billy’s attention.

“Listen,” he said. “Shit, there’s so much you need to learn. Why didn’t I- never mind. Listen. We have to be ready.”

“Dane,” Billy said. He hesitated, unsure how to handle the whiplash of sudden fervour, post-traumatic forcefulness. “You’ve already taught me plenty. I tracked you down, didn’t I? I found who to talk to, I made them listen. I did some knacking, did you know?” He described. An upright key tarred into the road, a lightbulb cold-cooking in an unlit frying pan. A fragment of broken street sign, _if you’re ever lost, this will point to where it came from._ A puddle of water under a traffic light, neon red-tinged in the evening as Billy filled an empty plastic bottle with it; _it’s a night light. Switches on when you least want it to, but hey. At least it’s reliable. How many things are, in this day and age?_

Metaphors and absurd imagery. He had the knack of it now.

Billy reassured. He soothed, as best as he could. _You did well with me,_ he tried to say. _It was good, what you did, rescuing me from the Tattoo and then taking me with you when you went rogue, teaching me how the world really works. You did right by me. And I’ll do the same for you. I have your back._

The talk of knacking seemed to settle Dane a little. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, nodding as Billy described. The lightbulb story actually got a dry little laugh from him.

“’Something might hatch from it,’” he repeated as Billy embellished with unnecessary detail and no small amount of pride. “Yeah, probably, if he believed you enough to buy it. Hope you realise what you did. Could be anything at all in there. Your fault if London winds up infested with LED dragons again.”

“I- what?”

“Yeah, they like to steal the bulbs from street lights and hoard them- nah, never mind, mate. It’s not that interesting.”

“You tell me about the dragons right now,” Billy said, “Or I will regale you with never-ending Lord of the Rings trivia, all night long. Don’t test me. You might be the squid crusader, but in this house I am king nerd.”

Dane must have known he was being distracted, much in the same way he had distracted Billy with his childish game and childhood stories. Still, he let himself be coaxed out from underneath his black cloud, away from the dark mood and the memories. Again, he became Billy’s teacher and guide and friend and-

“It’s good, the knacking you have,” he said. “No, forget the dragons for a second, I’ll get back to them. Listen. You’re not real specialised, you haven’t found your _thing_. Yeah, angels of memory and things behind glass, maybe you’ll settle there, and that’s fine. That’s powerful. But right now you’re still messing around, so the city’s your oyster.”

“I can’t do your thing,” Billy told him. “Snapping your fingers, making a light? I’ve tried. Doesn’t work.”

“No?” Dane lifted a hand, _snap_. Luminescence, like anglerfish lures. The light in the darkness, where light should not be, but was. He held it there longer than usual, so that Billy could lean in and peer at the bright little ball, the microscopic motes floating within its glare. “Easiest thing. My grandfather taught me when I was five.”

“I just can’t make it work.”

“Ah well,” Dane said. “Never mind, eh? That trick of yours, with the bottled traffic light in the water, that’s a good one. You make it up on your own? Nice. You could do a lot with that.”

“I could try it with moonlight,” Billy said. He was only half joking, but Dane gave it actual thought before shaking his head.

“Better not. Traffic lights is one thing, that’s London stuff, and no one will mind anyway because _traffic lights_. Moon’s different. You might piss it off. There’s enough people out to get us as it is.”

As accustomed as Billy was growing to his new surroundings, to his newly skewed perception of the world around him, there were still moments that jarred. This was one of them; Billy sat on the floor, the daylight bleeding gradually out of the curtained window next to him, and was very aware of the absurdity of his current situation. Talk of trapping traffic lights in bottles, of not causing offense to the moon. Impossibilities and madness. But it all made perfect sense.

“Do you ever stop and think about how weird this all is?” he asked aloud, and Dane gave him an odd look.

“You what?” he said. Then his expression cleared. He almost smiled again; it was good to see. “Oh. Yeah, no, not me. Raised to it, remember? But I’ve seen how hard it can be for outsiders just learning, and you’ve had a more rushed education than most. Never mind. You’re alright. Best not to dwell on it too much.”

“I miss the Darwin,” Billy admitted. “Sometimes. I don’t what exactly I’m missing, except maybe that none of my molluscs ever caused me this much trouble. Are there mollusc cults? Don’t answer that actually, I don’t want to know. I just…dream it a lot. I’m there, minus the tourists and the coworkers, it’s usually just me. I’m walking through the corridors, past the specimen jars, and they’re all turning behind glass to watch me. They have squid eyes. Every single one. Probably not a good sign, is it?”

Dane shrugged; _I’m just a soldier, mate, you’re the one with the prophetic dreams. You tell me._

“Sometimes dreams are just dreams,” he said. “Had some weird ones in my time, let me tell you. Though not since.” Words failed; he shrugged again, and Billy understood immediately.

“Not sleeping well?”

“Not a good place to be. I get as much as I need.”

“Dane.”

“It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“Yeah, but,” Billy said. “I’m not. Not as bad as you, I realise I have no idea what really happened. But I thought you were gone, you know? Even while I was looking for you, turning over all the stones, magicking my way into places that shouldn’t exist, I wondered. Kept avoiding the question of what I’d do if I showed up too late.” He had been too late. Dane had told him, and Billy believed it; even beyond several missing teeth, remnant sprains, two broken fingers he had taped up while Dane gritted teeth and said nothing. Even beyond all that, there were shadows. In Dane’s eyes, in the way he moved, the way he carried himself. Dane was not alright.

But he was alive. That counted for a lot. More than it should have.

After all the impossible things he had been forced to accommodate into his world view recently, this didn’t strike Billy as particularly surprising. Dane was something to him, and that something extended outside the borders of friendship. Of course it did. Billy accepted it as reasonable, and didn’t let it frighten him.

“I’m just glad you’re here,” he said. “Even if it fucked us both up. You worse than me, of course-”

“Drop it,” Dane said, not ungently. “It’ll pass with time, assuming we have any left.”

Billy dropped it. He wasn’t satisfied; he knew Dane better than to prod, and not well enough to try a different tactic. It was a strange state of being. At once close and not as close as he wanted them to become.

“It’s not really past tense,” he said after a while, as the semi-comfortable silence grew too pensive, and the sky outside too dark. “You actually are still my type.”

Dane did not seem troubled by the drift in topic. He stretched where he sat, a casual display of musculature that in no way looked unintentional. “I figured,” he said. “Wasn’t sure if I should mention it.”

“You could try to look a bit more surprised.”

“I ain’t.”

“Oh, the hell you’re not,” Billy said. “You didn’t even realise until I told you.”

“It makes a lot of sense in hindsight,” Dane said; irritatingly unconcerned, unfairly at ease. “Also, you wasn’t exactly subtle when you came charging in with your gun and the damn _sea_ at your heels.”

“You’d do the same for me.”

“I would,” Dane agreed. “Probably will before we’re through, though maybe with a less stupid-looking gun. I have some pride.” The look on Dane’s face was fond, and it suited him. Briefly, the shadows faded back a little. He sat straighter. Crooked a finger, _come here_ ; Billy shuffled close enough that neither of them had to lean too far, and then they were kissing.

It was another distraction, Billy knew, but no less honest for that. He was not being humoured here; Dane’s hand at the back of his head, fingers caressing his skull, drawing him in, that was not indulgence. That was real.

They moved slowly against each other, as if through water, as if time was all they had. And Billy knew that when they broke the surface for air, they would not discuss it. They would not know how.

But it was real nonetheless.


End file.
